Embodiments of the inventive subject matter generally relate to the field of wireless communication and, more particularly, to multicast transmissions for power management in an ad-hoc wireless system.
Wireless devices implement power saving mechanisms to conserve battery power and to reduce energy consumption. In an ad-hoc wireless local area network (WLAN), a wireless device generates unicast and/or multicast announcement traffic indication map (ATIM) frames to notify other wireless devices of pending data transfers. The ATIM frames are transmitted in an ATIM window. The wireless devices that receive the ATIM frames remain in an active power state to receive the data. The wireless devices that do not receive the unicast ATIM frames enter into a sleep mode or an inactive power state after the ATIM window ends.